The Rock
by Drownedinlight
Summary: [One Shot] Murtagh visits a place that harbors too many old memories.


This song is originally from the show "So Weird" and is sung by Mackenzie Phillips. I re-listened to it recently and thought that it fit Murtagh somehow.Please review and tell me what you think

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Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Eragon characters or the Song "The Rock".

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The castle was cold with the morning chill but as long as Murtagh had known it, it had never been warm. Touching the very stone sent chills up his spine, not because they froze 'till first light touched them but for all the memories they held. The sounds of crying, flesh and dying poured from these walls into his soul. All the sounds of his youth. All the sounds that made him damned and hurt and emotionless. And he remembered running and knowing that he hadn't stopped. He traced the tone with his calloused hands as he went towards the lands. 

"There's a low rock wall by the cliffs of Mower," poured from his lips, come from some far off memory. "Runs from down on the ground, right up through the sea air. As a child I would climb to the top of those stairs and wish on the fog I was anywhere else." The memory was unbidden. The first time he'd ever seen his father hit his mother. They had been arguing and then Morzan's hand flew. Tears weaved onto Selena's now red printed face and Murtagh felt scared. He didn't know why he was, but he let the fear drive him and he ran. He ran swiftly from the hall to the see shore. He could not hear his father's cry,

"MURTAGH!"

The air now tasted salty as he paced beside the grey stone next to him. It had seemed so much larger as a child

"The farms and the valleys are ringed with the stones, of the men who built walls 'souse to be more alone. All that's left of them now are their fears and their bones. But the rocks they pulled up were all I've ever known." He ran far, and he ran long that night until he found that large rock on that wall that he climbed and cried on 'till the dawn when he father came and wrapped him in a cloak. Now he climbed the still large rock with ease. He pulled his legs close to him as he sat.

"The Rock fought my spirit, the Rock fed my anger, the Rock broke my heart like the waves of the sea. I tried hard to fight but it still grew inside me. This island, my Ireland. The Rock is in me."

He walked on, back towards the castle. He stopped before the entrance hall knowing the memories that lay there. He instead went around trying not to think of it. But it was no use. There was that night…he hadn't known of his father's frustrations or of the pints that he had taken that night.

"Hard was the ground, in which this child grew. Unforgiving and cold was the home that I knew."

"Papa!" he cried racing from his play area near the fire. But his father did not reach for him like he normally would.

"Run, boy," came the harsh whisper. "Run to your room."

"But, Papa—"

"RUN! RUN NOW!" Murtagh turned and ran, but fell when the hard sword collided with his back.

"But knowing the soil's no harbor for you makes pulling up roots that much easier to do." His hand clenched against the very sword that gave him the scar as he continued to pace the around the castle. He cried, as he felt his very heart break, "Set sail, young pilgrims!" The night he ran from the king. Seeing Tornac's bloody face. "Set sail to a new land! Set sail!" Eragon, the Varden, Nasuada. "Our future is out there to find…" What future? There was none, not for him. Only memories that never ceased to be.

"Now it's been years, since I've been in that place." Tears flowed freely and he didn't know why.

All he heard that night was the clash of metal. He had wandered into the entry hall, where the sound was coming from. There was his father, beaten and bloody, fighting another man.

"And the winds of my life have all weathered my face."

But that was dangerous; had not father just warned him of such just yesterday that the stones there were slick and that you could slip. Indeed it was just so. Morzan lost his footing and Brom saw his moment. In and instant the silver blade he held was stained with crimson as it went strait through the man that had killed so many.

Morzan choked, blood pouring out of his mouth. Murtagh screamed with tears as he saw his father in such a state. Morzan heard his son and looked into the young boy's shining eyes.

"I love you, my son." The words of his lips fell on his dying breath as he fell back and Brom pulled free his sword. Murtagh knew why he cried. It was the same reason he had collapsed and cried then before running to his rock. He loved his father and his father loved him.

"But it's only with distance and the coming of grace that I see in you beauty I could never replace." Murtagh raised his hands to the sky as dawn tainted the grey sky. "The Rock forged my spirit, the Rock was my anchor, the Rock held me fast through the storms of my youth." With the last of his tears ending with the night, he wiped his eyes.

Turning away from the castle, he walked until he saw a familiar red form.

_Have you done what you needed to? _Thorn asked

_Aye,_ Murtagh replied. He stopped a bit at the bottom of the castle steps to acknowledge a grave barely marked. Drawing Za'roc he stuck it into the folds of the earth.

"Rest well... Father. Come Thorn. It is time to go." He mounted his dragon and with one last look at his father's grave and the home he once knew he finished the words of his soul, "Now you'll never die 'cause you live on inside me. On Illin Sha Ma Herring Fain! Lai Lai Lai Lai!"


End file.
